Exposing the Real Che Guevara Read Online Free PDF Page B

hand holding up placards, waving fists, and yelling “ Assassin! ” as Guevara prepared to make his grand entrance.
    As Che neared the U.N. entrance, a New York cop named Robert Connolly noticed a grim-faced woman racing down Forty-third Street. He alerted his colleague Michael Marino. The two cops tensed while watching the woman pick up speed as she neared the makeshift barrier erected specifically to protect Che at the U.N. perimeter. A large knife flashed in the woman’s hand.
    “Watch her!” bellowed Connolly. “She’s got a knife!” Connolly and Marino started sprinting toward her.
    “ Arriba! ” the woman yelled, closing on Che. Only then did Che’s bodyguards begin to react. She shrieked again, her little legs pumping furiously.
    The cops were closing on her when she turned, yelled “ Arriba! ” a final time, and waved the huge knife. They easily dodged her knife and gang-tackled her. After a few seconds of rolling and scuffling, the inflamed woman, Gladys Perez, was subdued.
    “I meant the officers no harm,” Gladys panted while being led away. “The knife was meant for the assassin Guevara!” 1
    Officers Connolly and Marino were soon on their way to St. Clare’s Hospital for treatment of multiple scratches and gouges inflicted by the struggle. Gladys was telling the truth. Her knife did not touch the cops. The poor officers tangled only with the buzz saw of her teeth and fingernails as she struggled to get at Che.
    Unscathed, Che Guevara entered the halls of the General Assembly and started his speech. “Executions?” He paused for effect at one point. “Certainly, we execute!” he declared to the claps and cheers of that august body. “And we will continue executing [emphasis his] as long as it is necessary! This is a war to the DEATH against the Revolution’s enemies!” The Spanish word for death is muerte , and Che rolled the Rs deliciously. The trilling of “ mueRRRRTE! ” resonated grandly throughout the hall. 2
    Che was merely proclaiming, of course, what the scholars of The Black Book of Communism would reveal—that fourteen thousand Cubans would be executed without anything smacking of due process by the end of the decade. For perspective, consider that Slobodan Milosevic went on trial for allegedly ordering eight thousand executions. The charge against Milosevic—by the same United Nations that applauded Che—was “genocide.” Che let the General Assembly’s ovation that greeted his “ mueRRRRRTE! ” subside and proceeded to other favored themes. “The government of the United States is not the champion of freedom,” he said, “but rather the perpetuator of exploitation and oppression against the peoples of the world and against a large part of its own population!” More claps, more cheers. Yankee Imperialism was “a carnivorous animal feeding on the helpless.” Another ovation. 3

The Toast of Manhattan
    Che was in New York for eight days but could barely accommodate all the Beautiful People jostling to meet him. On Face the Nation, Che was softballed by the New York Times ’s Tad Szulc. “The road of liberation will go through bullets,” 4 Che said, firing rhetorical bullets through the softballs—and paying no price in reputation for this extreme display of belligerence.
    Lisa Howard—Hollywood actress, Mutual Radio Network host, and ABC noontime news anchorette—hosted Che in her Manhattan penthouse. Howard had also invited Democratic senator Eugene McCarthy, a lifelong opponent of capital punishment, to fete Che. Howard, a self-appointed matchmaker between Cuba and the United States, achieved nothing but the encouragement of even more spirited denunciations of her country.
    Such was Che’s New York social swirl that Malcolm X had to settle for a written message, which he read in Harlem’s Audubon Ballroom. “Dear Brothers and Sisters of Harlem,” Malcolm read without disclosing the messenger, “I would have liked to have been with you and Brother Babu .